The use of modern, easy-to-clean, prefabricated kitchen, bathroom and cellar furnishings, furniture with plastic veneer, and the increasing use of freezer chests, refrigerators, washers and dishwashers, that is, household appliances with enameled metal walls with large surfaces, have led to a steep increase in the demand of liquid all-purpose cleansers for the household in the last few years. The use of such agents has gained in importance in industrial and hospital use as well. The application of these all-purpose liquid cleansers must be as simple and uncomplicated as possible. Most of these products are offered preferably as aqueous concentrates. They can be applied diluted or undiluted to a moist, absorbent cloth of any desired texture or to a sponge with which the hard surfaces of metal, lacquered wood, plastics, ceramic products, such as porcelain, tiles, glazed tiles, glass, etc., are wiped to remove dust, greasy dirt and spots. It is desirable that this treatment of surfaces does not leave any spots and streaks behind due to the cleanser and does not require subsequent treatment with a cloth moistened with clear water (rinse treatment).
Such cleansers in the form of more or less dilute solutions or concentrates with a content of capillary-active adducts obtained by the reaction of ethylene oxide with 1,2-glycols having 8 to 26 carbon atoms in the molecule, are described in Swiss Pat. No. 433,768 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 3,406,208). In addition, these cleaners may also contain, among others, possibly amounts of anionic surface-active compounds or tensides, such as alkyl benzenesulfonates.
Cleansers containing, as active tensides, an ethoxylated mixture of non-terminal vicinal alkanediols or also partially etherified non-terminal vicinal alkanediols with hydroxyl or also hydroxyl-alkoxyl groups are described in the German published patent application DOS No. 1,910,765 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 3,758,410). Such products are suitable for the cleaning of textiles made of cotton or synthetic materials, such as polyesters or of mixtures of cotton and polyesters. The statement is made that the active tenside mentioned in this patent can also be mixed with anionic tensides, such as, for example, alkylaryl sulfonates, in which case the sulfonates must be present in this mixture in at least equal proportions, preferably, however, in a large excess. Practical examples for such mixtures are not given in this publication. It is merely shown with comparison trials that these active tensides, which are claimed to be novel there, possess better properties for the cleaning of textiles than a sodium alkylbenzene sulfonate. However, no mention of the possible utilization of the mentioned tensides for inclusion in liquid cleaners for hard surfaces, neither alone nor in combination, can be found in this patent.
Clear rinse agents for the cleaning of dishes in machine dishwashers without leaving spots, consisting of a liquid mixture of adducts of ethylene oxide to aliphatic non-terminal vicinal alkanediols with a linear alkyl chain of 10 to 20 carbon atoms with hydroxyl groups statistically distributed around a median value with the main amount in the center of the carbon atoms chain and foam-suppressing nonionic alkylene oxide adducts to higher alkanols, alkanediols and alkylphenols, as well as their formaldehyde acetals are described in Austrian Pat. No. 329,722 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,779,934. Mixtures with anionic tensides are not considered. The problems of spotless rinsing in the cleaning of dishes in the dishwasher an in the manual cleaning of hard surfaces in the household are largely different so that, as a rule, information derived from knowledge about one product and its effectiveness in one field cannot be applied to another field.